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Saturday, May 2, 2015

Yeah, I don't have any sort of witty theme for this week's feature, so... here are two Nam-Combo picks. How does that sound to you, guys?Wings of Tomorrow (Tatsujin Mix)God Eater 2

Version

All

x4 (213)

x6 (299)

x6 (505)

x9 (765)

Taiko 0 M, Taiko Wii U 2, Taiko + 160 none godea2

If God Eater games' No Way Back and some of Taiko 14's most popular Game Music tracks were put into a blender, this will most likely be the final result, pouring out both familiar and new elements for its Taiko notecharts and the newborn song itself.

Wings of Tomorrow comes from the Japan-exclusive game God Eater 2, released on November 14th, 2013 for both the PSP and the PS Vita. Much like the previous titles, Namco's Monster Hunter-esque title has players facing the vicious Aragami monsters in a world at the edge of collapse, now with the help of new characters, weapons and gameplay mechanics. In terms of story, the game is set three years after the events of the semi-sequel God Eater Burst, where a mysterious pandemic brought by the so-called "Red Rain" has struck the Fenrir Far East Branch; a special task force unit known as "Blood" has been sent to investigate, and the player will take control of God Eaters from both sides in order to witness the main Story campaign's events.

Much like Monster Hunter titles, many of the Aragamis in the game have signature themes for their battles, and Wings of Tomorrow happens to be one of them, being the theme of the wolf-like Marduk (God Eater 2's signature Aragami). Composed by Go Shiina (椎名豪), the song is one of the few in the games featuring English lyrics, sung by MacKenzie Green in a enthusiastic style not too far away from other songs for Namco video-games, such as Ace Combat: Joint Assault's IN THE ZONE. Go Shiina is also the responsible of the custom song cut that has been used for Taiko games, being labeled the 'Tatsujin Mix' in the same way of the Tekken 6 song known on Taiko as 'Karma'.

However, the similarities with the two songs don't stop at the song's title wording and style, as anticipated above! Wings of Tomorrow's Oni mode heavily inherits elements from said GM tunes in many elements, such as the will of having an iconic Max Combo counter (ITZ, Karma), the generic-charted, stamina-draining choruses and hellish guitar solo patterns (No Way Back, ITZ), for a chart that greeted the GM-heavy Momoiro Version arcades with an old recipe that keeps itself relevant to today's rating standards.

Today's second song is also about an ideal element merging related to this creation, this time concerning two topics that are not seen very often on Taiko games: dubstep/electronic vibes and Vocaloid songs which are so close to become actual Namco Originals. And once again, this feat has been made possible by the Kagamine Vocaloid twins! Namco Sounds composer Sato Takafumi (佐藤貴文) is the creator of EDY, thus explaining the reason of why his name doesn't appear as the song's subtitle, muck like earlier Hatsune Miku songs and other isolated cases.

While there's not too much to talk about for the song's origins (as of now), its Oni notechart can easily do the talk alone in terms of cluster gimmicks! EDY is seen by many players as the lesser cousin of Namco Original DEBSTEP!, as both the songs bend the dubstep music's irregular sounds into 1/16-1/24 cluster hybrids scattered all over the place, with this Vocaloid song being the easiest of the two due to the minor note amount and no scrolling speed changes for an harder chart readability.

Heh, I just picked up two Nam-Combo songs from the top of my head, really. Had this planned since the week's beginning with my paper drafts ready, so it wasn't even meant to be some sort of PS Vita-related feature to begin with, haha